THIS General Election is routinely compared with several of yesteryear.
It's either like 1992 when John Major snatched it from the jaws of defeat, 1974's slim Labour majorities and two polls-in-a-year, or even 1923 when the Tories were forced into a hung parliament.
No-one has mentioned 1945. Then, Winston Churchill turned a likely loss into a Labour landslide, a pivotal moment his claim Clement Attlee's programme, including the creation of the NHS, would require "some form of a Gestapo" to implement.
The Scottish element of the General Election campaign became visceral for a time this week.
Monday's Glasgow stramash, when Jim Murphy and Eddie Izzard were drowned out by a rabble including at least two SNP members, triggered another round of name-calling.
I know one of the ring-leaders, Sean Clerkin. He doesn't think he's William Wallace. Mr Clerkin is a nuisance, shouts but can't listen, lacks self-awareness and has a near pathological need to protest.
Malcontents tell him things, such is his reputation for mischief. His ragtag gangs over the years rarely top a dozen.
I don't know the SNP pair, Piers Doughty-Brown and "Scottish Resistance leader" James Scott. I do know they and Mr Clerkin were prominent in some headline-making unpleasantness when Ed Miliband was in town last week.
Mr Doughty-Brown also secured national media attention filming and stalking Labour's Margaret Curran. There's a pattern here.
Of course, Scottish politics is intensely polarised and tribal; flags are omnipresent, decorum is often absent. We're also in the age of the "cyberbully", Nat, Brit or otherwise. But this trio and some chums have in recent weeks given millions throughout the UK a prism through which to view Scotland; one of angry, intolerant and downright creepy nationalism.
The connotations are unspoken yet obvious.
Others aren't so coy. Some mainstream commentators have this week likened the use of a lectern by Nicola Sturgeon to the Nuremberg Rallies and compared the SNP with the rise of Nazism in the early 1930s.
One prominent Labour member's name is synonymous with outbursts likening Scotland's party of government with the Third Reich.
Meanwhile, election posters and offices of the SNP, Labour and the Tories have been defaced by swastikas, with a whole new generation introduced to the term 'Quisling'.
Don't breaches of Godwin's Law carry any shame any more? They should.
Yet our political leaders of all hues still do public walkabouts, contrasting, some say, with a more choreographed and cocooned campaign south of the Border.
Is "spiteful fanaticism" in Scotland borne out on the ground and any worse than the egg chucked at David Cameron or the mob who descended on Nigel Farage's family lunch?
Tomorrow is VE Day. Maybe it should also be an occasion to remember those who fought and died so others could make crass political points.
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